Much of the Department of Defense (DoD) – its 4,000 installations in 88 countries – is run on traditional mainframes and servers that provide critical support to intelligence, logistics, and operational missions. The warfighters of tomorrow need real-time access to information systems that were designed before smartphones or tablet computers existed. It is vital to preserve those mission critical systems and investments, and make them available to warfighters on the ground today; ensuring they are accessible via hand-held devices or network-connected computers, through the cloud or through a virtualized infrastructure, nabling the battlefield of the future.
COBOL
Many of the DoD’s critical systems are written in COBOL, a programming language that has been around for more than 50 years. The language may be legacy, but it’s also proven; 90 percent of daily global financial transactions are processed in COBOL and it boasts a developer community in excess of one million. Micro Focus can take your COBOL systems and migrate them to re-hosted platforms such as Microsoft® .NET, Java Virtual Machine (JVM), Linux, UNIX®, or even to the cloud. Agencies can now deliver critical applications to the warfighter – wherever the battle may take them – extending DoD’s reach and significantly reducing mainframe costs.
Mainframe
DoD applications must deliver maximum value on the right platform for the mission. Micro Focus can help migrate your applications – or even your entire mainframe environment – to enable modern programming and agile response, all while significantly reducing operational costs within the first year of implementation.
Utilizing Micro Focus’ solutions, the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) replicated a zOS environment onto HP-UX-Itanium and deployed the servers to Afghanistan, increasing performance and providing an additional capability that directly supports the mission – at a much lower cost than implementing a true mainframe.
An Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD)-level agency moved applications off zOS and onto Solaris, reducing yearly mainframe costs from $14.5 million a year to only $2.7 million a year – an 81 percent reduction.
Application Development
Given the inherent security and often considerable complexity, developing software for the DoD is a challenging process. We provide a comprehensive toolset that combines all phases of the development lifecycle, from requirements definition and lifecycle management to testing and software change management, allowing for improved quality, and faster, stronger delivery processes – independent of language or platform.